New Yorker Bag of Money

I sold a new Chrysler New Yorker to some folks in 1982 or so. It was a super busy Saturday and these folks drove in a beat up old Chevy pick-up, belching blue smoke and making noises like a train locomotive trying to get rolling. Grandpa and Grandma got out with little granddaughter, all wearing tattered but clean overalls, and stretched and moseyed toward the front door of the dealership. The few salesmen with no customers all found reasons not to hang around and went to get coffee or a smoke, so I opened the door for the folks and said “hi.”

The man had a newspaper ad crumpled in his hand, and he smoothed it out so I could see it. It was our ad, and he pointed and said, “I want to buy this here Chrysler.” The ad was for a brand new New Yorker, and the ad said it was “$15,999 Cash.” Well someone else was trying to buy the car right then, but I showed it to them anyway and went in to talk to the sales manager to see if the first people were going to buy it or not. They had been haggling on the price for a couple of hours. My boss told me to go ahead and write it up, so I did. I showed the folks the price was $15,999 plus tax, license and fees. Grandpa looked at me and said, “The ad says cash, is that right?” I asked if they wanted to finance, because I’m sure we could do that for him if his credit was good. He said they would pay cash and told his granddaughter to go get the money.

She went out to the truck and came back with a brown paper bag. He took it from her and dumped it out right on my desk. He said, “that should be it.” I looked at the pile. It was twenties, fifties, some fives and tens, and some hundreds, some flat and crisp and some all wadded up. I asked how much was there, and he said $15,999, just like the ad said.

I told him again about the tax and license and fees and he sent granddaughter to the truck again for another sack. And he dumped that out, too. It seemed, looking at the pile of money, like it could be enough, so I went and told my boss they had all the money and wanted the car. He sent the other salesman out to tell the other would-be buyers they had snoozed and lost. You could hear the guy yelling across the street, but my folks were happy.

We all counted out the money, and he had actually miscalculated the amount of tax and license and had included about 50 bucks too much, so we put the deal together. They were the nicest people I had ever sold a car to. That was a very expensive car at the time and to look at the people you’d never think they could or would ever want to buy a car like that. But they did.

I guess it shows the adage to never judge a book by its cover…oh…and for the other would-be buyers, a good deal is one you shake hands on and go home happy.